{"id":714,"date":"2009-12-10T23:40:37","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T22:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=714"},"modified":"2010-02-27T17:59:01","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T16:59:01","slug":"when-the-aztec-tomb-of-the-emperor-is-finally-opened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=714","title":{"rendered":"When the Aztec tomb of the Emperor is finally opened"},"content":{"rendered":"

I go to the British Museum to hear Leonardo L\u00f3pez Luj\u00e1n talk about his work on the Aztec pyramids of the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City<\/strong>.\u00a0 There is an almost palpable\u00a0 air of expectation about the event — after several years of excavation, his team have reached the entrance to what may well be a royal tomb.\u00a0 The glyphs on the doorway correspond to those for the reign of Ahuizotl, Moctezuma\u2019s predecessor as Emperor of the Aztecs (or Mexica, as the British Museum keeps pedantically reminding us to call them).<\/p>\n

Even the natural — and proper — caution of an archaeologist cannot prevent Leonardo from getting excited at the prospect.\u00a0 And he’s had three years to do so — the monolithic lid to the tomb was first uncovered in October 2006 (by workmen clearing the wrong site by accident).\u00a0 The reason it’s taken so long to excavate is that the water table is very high in what was once, after all, a\u00a0 city built on a lake, like Venice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tomb lid showed a representation of the nocturnal earth goddess Tlaltecuhtli carved into the pink andesite, with claws extended to receive the dead.\u00a0 Ground-penetrating radar shows there are three chambers below the tomb lid.\u00a0 Funerary offerings placed at the entrance to these chambers include gold offerings, the bones of an eagle and a dog, and the pelt of a spider monkey.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The moment when the tomb is\u00a0 finally opened may well be the first really momentous archaeological find of the 21st century: no tomb of an Aztec emperor has ever been found before.\u00a0 And it will happen soon.<\/p>\n

see Mexico City Dreams<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Traveller Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I go to the British Museum to hear Leonardo L\u00f3pez Luj\u00e1n talk about his work on the Aztec pyramids of the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City.\u00a0 There is an almost palpable\u00a0 air of expectation about the event — after several years of excavation, his team have reached the entrance to what may well be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mexico","category-uncategorized","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}